Based on a published image on the Angry Birds Tumblr, it would appear from the posted images that Rovio is going Star Wars with the next edition of Angry Birds.

While the company claims that it will be the “next big thing,” they don’t go on to say more than that; we should expect more info in the weeks ahead. The picture shows an Angry Bird dressed in a Jedi robe and holding a lightsaber, which to us means Star Wars.

Rovio has been busy with the recent release of the Bad Piggies spin-off from the Angry Birds franchise. The new release has broken sales records and shot directly to number one on the App Store sales charts. It seems Rovio continues to roll along and fans still cannot get enough of the Angry Birds.

If you have not yet gotten into Battlefield 3 and you have been waiting for the right time to do so, it would appear you might want to wait just a tad longer. Electronic Arts has confirmed that they will be releasing what they are calling the Battlefield 3 Premium Edition.

What exactly is the Battlefield 3 Premium Edition, you ask? Simply put, it is everything Battlefield 3 all in one package. That’s right: you get a Battlefield Premium subscription, all of the DLC map pack content, the multiplayer welcome kit, the newcomer upgrades, and, of course, the Battlefield 3 game with the online play code.

The price point will be $70, and that is actually a great value for the money and the best deal you can get if you just want to get into Battlefield 3. Look for it to arrive on retailer shelves in North America on September 11, 2012. The European release will be September 14th. When the Premium Edition is released it will be available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC platforms.

Point of View / TGT is locked and loaded with its new GTX 680 Beast Watercooled Edition 4GB graphics card. The main difference between this card and the earlier launched GTX 680 Beast Watercooled Edition 4GB is in the factory overclock. Users should not worry about whether they’ll buy the new card, because the company’s retail channels already carry the new card only. That the card is a new model is clear from the ‘Low Leakage’ sign highlighted on the box. Low Leakage means that PoV/TGT handpicked the crème of the crop GPUs that can handle higher clocks.

GTX 680 Beast 4GB (Low Leakage Selection) has a Base GPU clock at 1137MHz, while the earlier GTX 680 Beast 4GB ran at Base GPU clock of 1111MHz. The Low Leakage Selection’s Boost clock is 1229MHz, which is 92MHz higher than the Base clock. The “regular” Beast’s Boost clock is 1176MHz, which his 65MHz higher than the Base Clock.

It’s not only the GPU clocks that are responsible for superior performance. Namely, the Low Leakage card comes with overclocked memory, which wasn’t the case with the previous model. The memory comes overclocked by 101MHz (404MHz effectively). We must admit we liked the memory overclock because most users will never overclock it, despite the obvious performance gains in many games.

The graph below shows that while playing AvP at 2560x1600 with 4xAA and 16AF, the maximum Boost clock was at constant 1267MHz.

The water block used by PoV/TGT is AquagraFX. It is made by Aqua Computer and can be purchased separately.

The I/O panel is identical to those we’ve seen on air-cooled PoV/TGT cards. There are two dual-link DVIs and standard HDMI and DisplayPort outs. The card is powered via one 8-pin and one 6-pin power connectors.

Part of the memory is on the back of the card, which is bare and has no heatsink or backplate.

GTX 680 Beast 4GB was cooled via Aqua Computer’s three-fan radiator. The first results we got show that the low GPU temperatures (maximum of 44°C in AvP) worked great for the Boost clocks, which were maxed out and in turn brought performance gains. We received two GTX 680 Beast 4GB cards so we’ll soon have some SLI results for you as well. We’ll also have some numbers on how overclocking friendly the Low Leakage GPUs are.

If the preliminary figures are anything to go by, we’re looking at the fastest and quietest GTX 680 we’ve tested so far. Anyways, we’ll have the full review up soon, so stay tuned.

Warner confirmed that they are planning a “Game of the Year” edition release for Batman: Arkham City. The GOTY edition will first be released for the consoles and then later for the PC, with details to be announced at a later date.

The GOTY edition of Arkham City will include the main game, of course, plus all of the extras (and when we say all of the extras, we mean them all). It will include the challenge DLC maps, and all of the character DLC extras such as Catwoman, Robin, and Nightwing. It will also include all of the additional skins and will arrive with all of the rest of the DLC.

Those in North America will also get a download of the animated Batman: Year One as a bonus for buying the GOTY edition of Arkham City.

Warner also confirmed the upcoming release of “Harley Quinn’s Revenge” DLC that will see players able to switch between Batman and Robin while trying to stop Quinn’s plan for no good. Described as a story expansion DLC, the content is expected to arrive on XBL and PSN on or about May 30th.

The GOTY edition of Arkham City will arrive for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on May 29th in North America, while a release date in Europe was not confirmed, sources tell us we should likely expect it to arrive on June 1st.

Those PC fans that have been so vocal about wanting to get a PC version of Binary Domain will finally to get their wish. Yes, Sega has finally confirmed today that PC players will be getting Binary Domain in both a digital and boxed release.

Sega says the reason for the decision to release a PC version comes down to the company listening to the fans that were so vocal about getting a PC version of the game. Sega does not know when the exact release date will be for the PC version, but it suspects that they will be able to make an April release date at some point during the month.

Sources had been telling us that a PC version of Binary Domain was a possibility, but it seemed that it took Sega a long time to officially confirm it. Sources tell us that at one point a PC version was planned, and then work stopped on the PC version to complete the console offering.

After such a successful launch of Alan Wake for the PC on Steam, Remedy is teaming up with Legacy Interactive to distribute a boxed release of Alan Wake for the PC in North America. Currently, the boxed release is only planned for the North American market, but that could change in the future.

The boxed version for the PC will start hitting shelves on April 3rd. The boxed offering for the PC will be similar to the Steam offering, in that it will contain both The Writer and The Signal DLC packs as part of the offering.

The decision to release a boxed version of Alan Wake for the PC took a lot of effort and was still a bit unexpected after the success of the Steam Collector’s Edition launch deal. Remedy decided to wait an additional week and extend the deal on the Steam Collector’s Edition.

Despite all of this, Remedy says that fans were still waiting for the announcement of a boxed version of the game, as they wanted it rather than the Steam version.

Microsoft has confirmed that it will be releasing another Xbox 360 Special Edition offering. This time around it will be a new bundle known as the “Xbox 360 Special Edition 4GB Kinect Family Bundle.” The bundle has been released and should be showing up on retailer shelves.

The package consists of a new glossy white Xbox 360 slim with 4GB of internal flash storage, a glossy white Kinect sensor, a white Xbox 360 controller, and two Kinect titles. The two titles included in the bundle are Kinect Sports and Kinect Adventures. In addition, Microsoft is throwing in 3 free months of Xbox Live Gold to start out with.

The Xbox 360 Special Edition 4GB Kinect Family Bundle is available in North America for a suggested retail price of $299. Microsoft has gone out of its way to indicate that quantities are limited for this bundle offering. Other regions will be getting limited numbers of this bundle offering, as well.

Microsoft, while confirming the Xbox 360 Special Edition 4GB Kinect Family Bundle, had no comment or news about the 10th anniversary Xbox bundle we told you about yesterday; but sources tell us that they will confirm it next month for release in most regions.

Club3D recently launched its GTX 560 Ti CoolStream OC Edition graphics card that, as the name suggests, comes factory overclocked and strapped with special cooling. CoolStream cooler with two fans should provide superior cooling to the overclocked core and at the same time be quieter than Nvidia’s reference solution.

In fact, CoolStream can be found on Club3D’s GTX 550 Ti CoolStream Super OC Edition that launched yesterday, although with one fan only.

GTX 560 Ti CoolStream OC Edition card ended up overclocked to 880MHz for the GPU and 1760MHz for Shaders. It features 1GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4100MHz and comes paired up with a 256-bit memory interface. We had a chance to check out GTX 560 Ti’s CoolStream cooler back at Cebit but today we’ll see how it fares aboard the GF114.

The card currently goes for about €214, which is about €5 more than Club 3D’s reference GTX 560 Ti goes for.

The GTX 560 Ti’s ticker is the GF114 GPU, which received plenty of positive acclaim so far and we’ve seen that the card boasts nice performance-per-clock ratio as well. Nvidia set GTX 560 Ti’s reference clocks at 822MHz for the GPU, 1644MHz for shaders and 4008MHz for memory. When the card is idle, the clocks go pretty low – 50.6MHz for the GPU, 101MHz for shaders and 67.5MHz for the memory.

Before we move on to the card, let us remind you that the GF114 is a derivation of GF104, as is evident from the number of transistors (1.95 billion). However, the GF114 packs a few improvements inherited from the GF110

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Before we show you the pictures, here’s what Club3D has to say about CoolStream technology:

" Club 3D CoolStream features high performance heatpipes that keep the components cool and outperform standard cooling solutions. Paired with a unique fan blade design, it increases airflow while reducing noise. The result is a dramatic increase of performance for your gaming and multimedia experience.

The name derived from Cool as in “cold”, together with Stream as in “flow”. A heatpipe contains fluid, which turns into gas (vaporizes) when it heats up, then it flows to the other end of the heatpipe. In this process, the gas looses the heat and changes back into fluid and returns to the place where it begun, thus creating a “flow” or stream.

CoolStream Technology will be used on Club 3D’s Nvidia and AMD chipset based products. This gives you up to 15% better heat dissipation than standard reference design coolers.

If you expect above the average performance on your Graphic card, Club 3D’s CoolStream Cooling Technology is just the kind of high performance that you have been looking for. Club 3D is currently using CoolStream Technology on HD 6900 + HD 6800, as well as on GTX 460, GTX 560Ti, GTX 550Ti, and will successively expand the range."

Club3D GTX 560 Ti CoolStream is almost 22.9cm long, like the reference 22,9cm (9 inches), and the card is 2 slots wide.

CoolStream cooler comes with 3 heatpipes and two 75mm fans. The fans are very quiet.

As far as video outs go, we have here the classic Nvidia design i.e. two dual link DVIs and mini-HDMI out. Note that only two video outs can be used simultaneously. Nvidia included an HDMI sound device within the GPU, so there is no need for connecting the card to your motherboard’s/soundcard’s SPDIF out to get audio and video via HDMI.

Geforce GTX 560 Ti comes with one SLI connector. This means you can combine up to two GTX 560 Ti cards in SLI mode for improved performance or image quality settings.

The card has two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors.

Unfortunately, Club3D GTX 560 Ti’s CoolStream OC Edition packaging didn’t come with additional converters or power cables. We really liked the box, especially for beings small and well designed, but we’d love to have seen at least a couple of mini-HDMI-to-HDMI dongles.

Overclocking the GF114 should not be a problem, regardless of whether it’s reference or specially designed GTX 560 Ti. Most GTX 560 Ti cards will run stable at 920+MHz. Club3D’s cooling provides a nice foundation for a healthy overclock and we got to following results. We managed to push the GPU from 880MHz to 970MHz, and the card remained quiet throughout.

Thermals and Noise

As far as noise levels go, the GTX 560 Ti CoolStream’s cooler is almost inaudible when idle, with GPU temperature around 34°C. The GTX 560 Ti CoolStream OC Edition is almost inaudible during operation too. In our case, intensive 3D resulted in GPU temperature of about 79°C, but it’s a pretty good balance between thermals and noise levels since the fan was inaudible throughout.

Conclusion

Club3D recently launched its GTX 560 Ti non-reference card with CoolStream cooling, which was almost inaudible both in idle mode and under workload. We must say that we consider silence to be the prerequisite for recommending any GTX 560 Ti, as there are currently many quality and silent cards such as our today’s sample.

Of course, Club3D decided to make it GTX 560 Ti stand out of the crowd and introduced a factory overclock. So, the card runs at 880MHz (822MHz reference) for the GPU and 4100MHz for the memory (4008MHz effectively). The card has two dual-link DVI outs and one mini-HDMI out. Note however that mini-HDMI-to-HDMI converters aren't included with the card.

Club3D GTX 560 Ti CoolStream Edition currently goes for about €214, which is only €5 more than you’d pay for Club3D’s reference GTX 560 Ti. You can check out the prices here.

In conclusion, Club3D GTX 560 Ti CoolStream OC Edition card is a factory overclocked card that provides extra performance and silence at the same time. The card will chew up 1920x1600 smoothly, regardless of your game of choice and it will definitely be a good choice for those looking for a faithful and silent companion.

Sapphire HD 6850 Toxic Edition is the first Sapphire-flavored card from the new AMD HD 6000 series. The HD 6850 Toxic Edition boasts original Sapphire cooling and the card is overclocked for extra performance. The HD 6850 Toxic's GPU runs at 820MHz whereas the GDDR5 memory comes clocked at 1100MHz (4400MHz effectively). Reference clocks, as you may remember, are 775MHz for the GPU and 1000MHz for the memory (4000MHz effectively)

With HD 6800 series, AMD introduced bang-per-buck competition to its own HD 5800 series. Sapphire’s HD 6850 Toxic Edition will of course be a bit more expensive than the reference card, but the build quality, finishing touches, silence and improved performance have always been great reasons for purchasing Toxic Edition cards. You can find this card priced at around €190 here.

Overclocking and general card management can be performed via TriXX overclocking tool, which is available to Sapphire’s Select Club (free for Sapphire enthusiasts to join online). Initial results we have suggest that cards can be overclocked to 960MHz with ease.

The I/O panel features two mini-DisplayPort 1.2 outs, one HDMI 1.4a and two DVIs.

Specially designed Toxic cooler with three heatpipes does a good cooling job and, as we’ve said before, runs quiet when fan regulation is at AUTO.

Higher overclocking will probably require manually increasing fan RPM, which will make it louder.